Strange as it may seem to those who do not live in the United States (and of course to most of us who do), the US court system has nothing to do with fairness. Seriously, I'm not just ranting here. The US court system dispenses justice, a very different concept from fairness. Justice is the application of the law. If we are lucky, the laws are fair, oftimes they are not.

If one wishes to prove this to themselves, all that is required is to be a litigant in a US court and try to argue that something is not fair. The best that you can hope for is a blank stare from the court, at worst a stern lecture from the bench, and of course losing your case.

Don't actually know if I have a point here, just thought that it would be of interest to those who were not aware of how the US legal sytem works.

That's an analytic truth, all justice systems dispense judgement based on the laws they have available. Systems that base judgement on whim, arbitrariness and individual ideas of fairness are not justice systems.

The question here is, how do justice systems deal with the sense of justice of their subjects? Normally this is considered to be a strength of justice systems based on case law -- the very short turn-around times of rulings -- but here it seems to fail. However, the case is not over yet, as pointed out in the update.

I think it has to do with precedent; US law follows what was previously decided in similar cases. IMNAL, but I would speculate that this concept originates from the various arguments regarding how to interpret the US constitution. For example, does one expand the meaning of the constitution by creating new law, or does one simply follow the succession of law that has unfolded in the time frame since the constitution? The latter seems to prevail today.

This means that in America, you can do what ever you want as long as there is not a law prohibiting it. In other words, reason has nothing to do with it. If there is not law against it, you can do it. One egregious example is that you can make an ad of complete lies, and say, in the hidden, fine print that it is all lies, and you will have not broken the law. Just read the ads for losing weight. Now, what kind of person would do this? Well, one which wants to exploit others. This includes a number of people and businesses and virtually all politicians (well, most, anyway). But not most Americans.

Here is my point. Most Americans are very good people, but the government and politicians (and some businesses) are morally corrupt abetted by a legal system that has a basis in precedent rather than morality (or reason and sense if you object to the word morality). This must be very hard for non-Americans to understand; probably, most Americans have trouble with understanding this. But, awareness in growing.

I think it has to do with precedent; US law follows what was previously decided in similar cases. IMNAL, but I would speculate that this concept originates from the various arguments regarding how to interpret the US constitution.

Similarly, I'm no lawyer, nor historian, but I'm fairly sure the US legal system is like this because it mimics the English Common Law system. That comes from a Mediaeval king (Henry II?) insisting that county courts consider the past rulings made within other county courts in order to reduce what would now be called a "postcode lottery" approach to justice.

Don't actually know if I have a point here, just thought that it would be of interest to those who were not aware of how the US legal sytem works.

That's not really anything specific to the US system - in pretty much all countries, it's a key element that rulings must be *consistent*. It might not seem fair in individual cases, but nor is it fair if two identical cases have different outcomes due to the whim of a judge.